Privacy & Ethics

At its core, Flock Safety is an American company — founded by American entrepreneurs, manufacturing U.S. products that help Americans stay safe and thrive. We believe that everyone has a right to feel safe in this country. 

At the same time, we believe strongly in the American principle of a right to privacy. Crime — for example, someone infringing on your person, or invading your home, car, or business — is a serious invasion of privacy, and Flock’s entire goal is to eliminate that crime. But we also know it is imperative that law-abiding citizens should be able to go about their daily lives without undue scrutiny, and should feel confident that their leaders and law enforcement are protecting their rights. 

Flock has designed our systems in a way that respect both the spirit and the letter of the Fourth Amendment and guard against unreasonable search and seizure. Flock’s platform supports law enforcement in upholding the Fourteenth Amendment and due process, ensuring equal protection of the laws.

Ultimately, better public safety and privacy protections go hand in hand. When we utilize ethically-built technology products, codify transparent policies, and ensure that people are held accountable, and personal liberties are protected.

Company Mission + Vision

Like many companies, our mission has evolved over time. It began with CEO Garrett Langley’s goal to eliminate non-violent crime. After a few years, the team realized that Flock was being used regularly to solve homicides, assaults, and many other violent crimes — and the mission broadened, to eliminate all crime. 

Flock now serves stakeholders across the community. In addition to crime-solving, our technology has helped find over 1,000 missing persons. We help Departments of Transportation work toward their vision of zero roadway fatalities, and parking departments achieve safer outcomes for drivers and pedestrians. We launched the Flock Growth Fund to support entrepreneurs in cities working toward a better future for all residents. 

With input from across the company, we once again expanded Flock’s mission: to Build Thriving Communities. This was a conscious and intentional decision to acknowledge that eliminating crime is a baseline, but it is not the end of the road for a better community. Safety means better health and educational outcomes, economic prosperity, job creation, and overall improved quality of life.

Product Decision-Making

To ensure our product development process is in alignment with our mission, we have instituted a multi-step decision-making process from R&D to General Availability. This process starts with first principles: Would this product contribute meaningfully toward a community becoming safer? And if so, does it abide by our Ethical Creed?

Policy Evaluation

While in early development stages, each product undergoes a Policy Evaluation, led by our Policy team in conjunction with cross-functional stakeholders. The Evaluation considers the upsides and any downsides of each product, including legal, ethical, privacy, public opinion, and feasibility considerations. Only once a product passes through this evaluation does it move into production. 

Accountability and Transparency Guardrails: Once a product is approved, a separate process considers what guardrails can be implemented to ensure community data is secure and protected, misuse is unlikely and swiftly discoverable, and transparency is easily accessible. Some examples of these guardrails are:

• ALPR Transparency Portal: Flock was the first company to create a free ALPR Transparency Portal for any customer who wants to make their ALPR usage completely accessible to the public. 
• Audit Reports: All Flock products include auditing by default, indefinitely saving usage reports so command staff or city leadership has full insight into the use of the products. 
• Drone Flight Logs: Flock’s Drone As First Responder (DFR) system provides all agencies with a publicly-available Flight Log page, which displays all flights, users, and flight purpose.

Democratic Accountability

We provide the tools for communities to decide how they enforce their local laws and norms. We’ve built a team who is responsible for supporting democratic authorization for our technology, traveling around the country answering questions in front of 1,000+ City Council meetings. Our products are all fully customizable, so law enforcement and cities can solve crime, retain the data, and enforce the local laws that are important to them.

We pair best-in-class technology with best-in-class internal policy.